**This serious: The Japanese exchange says hackers stole over $400M in cryptocurrency**

Coincheck said on Friday that some 500 million tokens of NEM, worth around $400 million at the time of writing, according to comments at a press event attended by Bloomberg. NEM, the tenth largest cryptocurrency based on total coin market cap, is a distributed ledger platform primarily aimed at enabling payments and other financial services.

The apparent heist is larger than the Mt. Gox hack in 2014 — in U.S. dollar value — but its impact is unlikely to be as significant given the sheer number of cryptocurrencies in the market today and the increased value of bitcoin.

Nonetheless, the incident is yet another reminder of the risk of leaving tokens inside an exchange rather than a more secure option such as a personal wallet or hardware-based option. It’s the latest in a string of recent incidents. Back in November, Tether said it lost $31 million due to an attack while EtherDelta suspended its exchange service for a period in December after it was compromised.